


Speak a Soft, Liquid Tongue

by Nanyoky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Animal Death, Blood, Blood Drinking, Boston, Codependency, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Incest, Major Illness, Nothing explicitly stated or shown, Open to Interpretation, POV Alternating, Rituals, Spells & Enchantments, Supernatural Elements, Unhealthy Relationships, Vampires, Werewolves, Witchcraft, Witches, but tread lightly if that's an issue for you, could be read several ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10830132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/pseuds/Nanyoky
Summary: Fic prompt from EssayOfThoughts: Pietro a vampire, wanda a witch. Line: "Wanda always had to stifle a scream when her brother’s fangs sank into her neck."





	Speak a Soft, Liquid Tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



> Woah darlin this got wild. But I feel like if you've made it this far you are prepared. I'm now quite attached to this au. May return some day.  
> This fic brought to you by Interview with a Vampire, Practical Magic, Which Witch by Florence and the Machine, and Nagymama's favorite Hungarian wine. Also guess who's been reading a ton of Shirley Jackson lately.  
> Thanks to EssayOfThoughts for such a delightfully questionable prompt! So glad I found a twins feelings buddy. <3

Wanda always had to stifle a scream when her brother’s fangs sank into her neck. Even with her hot brew. There was no amount of spinning head and numbed skin that could completely dull the pain and horror. She squeezed her eyes tight to it, but held onto him, refusing to let him pull back until her hands and feet started to feel cold.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry -"

"Don't -" her voice was always halfway to a snarl because she didn't want it to be a whimper. " _I_ did this to you. I _chose_ it."

And she had.

~

When they found out he was weak—Wanda always said "when you got sick," but he knew better. Sick implied some wrong thing coming into play from the outside, but the hole in his heart had always been there, the doctor said. It was his own body that was not enough—he had panicked and bargained, like the dying are supposed to. Everyone thought she was doing the same. The classic stages of grief. But when Wanda Maximoff made an offer, the universe had always been willing to haggle.

~

They had fled to New York when the city that raised them was more rubble than beating heart. Then to Salem because she chose it.

"My sister," he had laughed and kissed the side of her head, an arm slung over her shoulders. "Such a morbid witch."

It was a long-standing joke that the community was so active in the old town. Most of them lived there only to say they did, then worked and socialized in Boston. Most were in some kind of business, and pageantry was very in at the moment. A witch from Salem come into town just to see you was far more reputable than a witch that lived a block away. But Wanda worked out of the kitchen in their apartment. She liked it better that way. Pageantry had its uses, but her magic was stronger on those she invited intimately into the place where she slept.

They had only been there for a month when his tea all left the same signs and she caught birds to read their guts, over and over, becoming increasingly furious when they all spilled the same. He fainted out on a run and ended up in the hospital a few weeks later.

~

"I will not see you die."

Her eyes were flat and hard when she said it and he had not argued. She saw things, sometimes. different versions of their life. Some she would not tell him about.  She had the same look when she thought of them though, and he wasn't stupid. He could guess what could make her hold him with such feverish intensity and look at him like if she'd blinked, he might disappear. But she also saw different possibilities of _this_ life, so he knew there must be more than a chance. She must have seen him strong and whole and by her side. It was a comfort when he could no longer squeeze his fist to suppress the tremors.

~

It took a while, but she found someone eventually. A friend of a friend of a man in a bar frequented by her own kind. Hel boasted to be one of the few of her people born to the life. She claimed a father infamous amongst their people. Wanda did not bother to pretend she was impressed.

“Can you save him?”

She didn’t like Hel’s smile, but she trusted its arrogance.

He could barely stand by then. Wanda made Hel wait in the crowded kitchen amongst her herb bundles and candles. She paused at the door to his bedroom.

“How much will it hurt?”

The smile again. Wanda wanted to cut it off and use it in an elixir for stagefright.

“I’m told it’s like the agony of birth and ecstasy of death, all in one.”

Wanda added a few more ingredients to the pot on the stove. It was more opiate than ginger, and she was already feeling faint just breathing in the fumes. Sometimes the shortest distance between two points- reality as it was in the present, and what she wanted it to be- did not require magic at all, just a quick transaction behind the abandoned theater in town. She poured some into a mug and took it into his bedroom.

“Pietro?”

She could hardly look at him, but she made herself see his pale, too-thin form stretched out on the bed. It strengthened her resolve to cross the room, seeing his short, shallow breaths lifting his shrunken chest. To sit by his bed and take his face in his hand to wake him.

“Drink this,” she barely breathed, unconsciously feeling her full voice would harm his weakened body further. “She is here. But you must drink this first, _drágám_.”

He lifted his hand, but it shook too hard to take the chipped old mug from the local thrift shop. She steadied his head and tipped it for him instead, He winced. The stuff was bitter. She would find out how bad it was later.

“It will hurt, but this will help. And then I will have you back. I promise.”

He was able to focus just enough to hold her gaze a moment.

“I trust you.”

She hated what his voice had become. It shook and rasped now. But she would fix it. She would fix him. She had promised. And she never broke her promises. Not to him.

“I’m afraid your kitchen and sitting room, though charming in a pedestrian sort of way, have not held my interest long.”

Wanda took a deep breath through her nose and kissed Pietro’s sunken cheek, grabbing his hand.

“Look at you-“ Hel smiled from the doorway, that hatefully arrogant smile that was too bold as she looked at him. “Not long for this life, are you, _minn vænn_?”

When he did not answer, she stalked further into the room, touching his jacket, slung over a chair. Wanda wanted to slap her hand away.

“Giver’s choice.” Her eyes tracked slowly over his body. “Where?”

He managed to keep his eyes focused and hard while rolling up his sleeve and Wanda almost choked on her pride.

 ~

Hel had kissed him when she was finished drinking and when he thought of her, he could still taste his own blood on her tongue. Wanda had left the room at his first scream. The hot drink helped, but it was still pain unlike anything he had ever felt. And suddenly, there had been the smooth skin of an inner thigh in front of him.

“Giver’s choice.” He hated Hel’s voice. Mocking in it's over-gentle tone.

He drank and it was almost worse than the pain like acid in his veins. Her sharp nails raked through his hair and pulled tight when he tried to stop.

“You need strength to heal. All you can get now. Be good for me, _minn vænn_. Drink.”

“That is _enough_.”

Pietro could hardly see straight, but he knew Wanda was watching from the door, trembling in anger.

At last, Hel’s leg was gone.

“Sister is so overbearing.” A sharp nail cut a line down his face and her smile matched its arc. “But you won’t need her now.”

He heard Wanda cast a blood spell once the door closed, to seal the apartment against the unpleasant guest.

 ~

Barnes was a regular. There were many who offered people like him potions, and more than a few that provided lunar charts predicting changes down to the second. But Barnes claimed hers were the best.

"Don't know how you do it. Tried tracking it myself but it's always just off enough to matter."

"Because you do not factor in all that touches the moon's path and her relationship to you." She wrapped his latest chart around his bottle and tied it with twine. "Things like how fast the leaves have been falling, and your mother's mood."

"Mom's been dead a good long while."

"But 30 years ago today," she raised an eyebrow as she handed over the parcel. "She knew she was in love."

He tried to laugh off her claims but still bit his tongue and used a thumb and forefinger to take a smear of blood from his mouth and rinse his fingers in her fountain by the door, just as she asked of each guest. The ones that refused usually didn't return.

 ~

Pietro tried. But the trouble was Hel was a useless sire. Maybe she had been offended on returning to their flat and finding Wanda had warded against her. It didn’t matter why. She had left town shortly after turning him and hadn't given him a single clue as to how to survive or meet others.

In a passive hope to make things easier, he had tried animals. It hadn't eased the blinding thirst and he probably should have been more disappointed.

The first he killed was a wide-eyed girl who had giggled at first when he tasted her throat. He'd left her in the bathroom of the bar -a mistake, he later found out. The rest made a point to deposit any bodies in water or disfigured in ways that made it hard to distinguish marks on throats or wrists. They tried to draw as little attention as possible, to avoid conflict.

He was left a warning. A pair of dead ravens on their doormat. Wanda tried to pretend it didn't frighten her. She used them in a protection spell, cutting off their feet and putting them on chains for them to wear.

But he would not put her in danger. And with no one to ask- only the vague notion that his actions were being watched, he did not feed. He was just as weak as he had been before Hel. But this was worse. His weak heart had not driven him to aching distraction.

Wanda brought him bags of blood, stolen from the hospital, and cried when he could not force down the cold, sickly thick stuff.

He sat back on the couch, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to keep the room from spinning. He hadn’t been this hungry since they lived on the streets in their home.

“I’m sorry…” she sat across him and kissed his head. He could still smell her tears. “I’m sorry, I’m-“

“Don’t-“ Pietro knew his breath must have rattled against her neck. She stilled.

“Pietro…”

Pietro never wanted her thoughts to align with this on this thread. He shook his head against her, not trusting his jaws to open when they ached so much.

“Just enough.” Her voice was firm and dark. Like when she wove a spell whose results would be less than kind to others. “Enough to make you strong. Do it. I will _not_ see you die.”

She screamed the first time, then bit her own wrist to suppress anything more.

 ~

Barnes knew. He was her customer long before Pietro got sick. He saw him- the way he waned like the moon, then gained back the weight he had lost almost overnight. Like his strength was a single, sentient thing that hadn’t meant to be gone long anyway. But Barnes was not the one to start the talk. Wanda would have known. She liked him. Trusted him. Sometimes, she invited him to stay after she gave him her prediction for the coming month. When Pietro was out of course. But he knew. And even as he said nothing, Pietro hated him on principal.

“People talk,” Barnes said while she replaced her stockings at the end of her bed.

“But not you.” She let him tangle his fingers in her hair while he caught his breath in her sheets. She didn’t always allow this. “You do not give them fuel, do you?”

“I don’t,” he agreed, sitting up and kissing her bare shoulder. She wasn’t sure she liked such a familiar gesture from him. “But they say things. Mostly about him.”

“He’s done nothing wrong. And if he has, it is because his sire did not stay to tell him how to live this way.”

“You’re not supposed to choose what he has.”

Wanda tried not to sound flippant. Barnes had good intentions. He did not deserve her natural scorn.

“Such old-fashioned notions of ‘supposed to.’ So barbaric.”

“I’m not saying what’s right, I’m _warning_.”

He was earnest and far too honest for her liking. She turned and took his chin in her hand, holding his eyes with her own. “Warning of what, James Buchanan Barnes?”

There was power in saying a name. Even if he had planned on keeping anything from her, he would not have been able to.

“That he was never supposed to be what he is. And you shouldn’t still associate yourself with him. And if you keep on ignoring all those ‘should’s, they’ll do something about it more than talk.”

She let him go with a light hum and pulled back her hair before straightening her dress. The flat door opened and she shoved his shirt into his chest. It would be better for all of them if Barnes was on his way as quickly as possible now.

“Let them try.”

He pulled on the shirt, but hesitated, his eyes lingering on her throat. On the marks there.

“That’s not all they say.”

She wore wide, plunging necklines into town from then on.

~

He knew when he came home that something had happened.

“Wanda?”

She didn’t answer, even though he could hear movement in the bathroom. And could smell blood. He breathed slowly, trying to keep his anger under control.

“Before you say-“

He bit his own tongue as he rounded the corner to watch her clean her split lip. Her knuckles were just as damaged and he almost choked on his pride at the distinct difference in the smell of blood under her nails. Not hers.

“I’ll kill them.”

“You won’t.” Her voice left no room for argument. “You won’t do a thing, Pietro. It will be worse if you retaliate.”

“So I will not kill them.” He stepped to her back and pressed his lips to her hair while she finished. “But I will not stand by. _You_ won’t worry, _drágám_. _I_ will handle this.”

She met his eyes in the mirror front of the medicine cabinet. “I know. I trust you.”

~

Helen was not one of the ones who had beaten her behind the greenhouse when she went out for more lavender. But she showed up the next morning at the flat with a bruise cream and package of Wanda’s favorite tea.

“They’re just terrible sometimes.” She clicked her tongue at the scrape on Wanda’s cheekbone and her swollen jaw. “I don’t know why they can’t just…”

She left it there and Wanda tried not to let her lip curl. They sipped their tea for a few minutes in silence. It was late, and Wanda wondered if Pietro would be back before Helen gave up on her feeble lack of apology for what had happened.

“And what would you do?” she watched Helen’s eyes carefully. “About our… problem?”

Helen sighed and poured them both more tea. “I don’t know, Wanda. I just want everyone to be safe.”

Like Barnes, her eyes lingered on Wanda’s neck.

“I am.” She didn’t pick up her cup again.

The door opened and Helen stiffened slightly. Wanda caught Pietro’s gaze and twitched her head to one side. He lifted his chin in response before giving Helen a tight, brief smile.

“Good to see you, Helen.”

She did not meet his eyes and flinched visibly when he passed her chair to kiss Wanda’s cheek.

“Helen was just leaving.”

Once she was gone, they spoke in lower voices, so soft and liquid, Wanda was sure no one else would understand, if they heard.

~

She had had to adjust the protection spell on their flat, otherwise he could not come in on his own. It was insulting, that others could freely enter their home when he needed special permission, and it was not without its dangers to tamper with her protections. He came back once, to find her gone and the door unlocked. He knew the man sitting at the kitchen table. He liked him even less than Barnes.

“I will be nothing if not direct.”

Pietro watched him straighten his cuffs. Vision. He had had a name once, but he’d abandoned it long ago for his own protection. Wanda said she had learned much from him, which only made Pietro trust him less.

“Were you the one to have her hurt?” He had no interest in what Vision had come to say. “Did you do it yourself?”

The man at the table looked down, but did not lie. “No. I would not solve problems in our community this way, were it up to me.”

“But you do nothing to stop those that do.” He was only able to keep his voice steady by remembering Wanda’s warning. “You are not much use to her then, are you?”

Vision at least had the decency to look grave and sad at this. “If she had only listened to me-“

“Then her weak, troublesome brother would be dead, and all your little community’s troubles would be solved.” He let out a laugh. “Do you think you could ever make her _obedient_?”

He was sure Vision did not feel hate or anger. He had lived so long, he was barely human and had little feeling left. But there was something close to it in his eyes now.

“I care little for what danger your actions bring to your own people. But I would have thought your…” there was scorn in this pause, “ _affection_ for your sister would not allow you to harm her.”

He was across the room in an instant. For all Vision’s power, no one was as fast as Pietro since Hel, not even the oldest and most powerful witch in Massachusetts. He had a hand planted on the back of Vision’s chair, and the other on the table.

“I am not _theirs_.” Vision did not flinch, but so close, Pietro could hear his pulse quicken. “And she. Is _not_. Yours.”

Vision did not give the fountain an offering. He never did.

~

She was sleeping during daylight now. Most of her clients scheduled appointments after sundown anyway, so it made little difference what hours she kept. And she hated waking in the night and finding him gone. In some club or bar, finding someone too weak with drink or drugs to feel pain or fear. She could not fall asleep in the empty apartment anymore, so it made more sense to wake with him in the evening.

The ones that had beat her left town. It had not been dishonest of her to allow Pietro to take his own action, but to also plant hex bags in their gardens- hidden with rosemary and blackadder to mask their purpose. She did not care to find out what he had done, but was content in knowing they both slept easier for it. Vision tried to visit, but always seemed to pick a time when they were both home. When at last he broke in frustration and threatened to call upon those who disposed of dangerous vampyre, she added his presence to her blood spell on the building. He tried to speak to her when she went out to do the shopping, but found only aching temples, the closer he came to her.

Wanda wanted to say she missed him and the others, but it would have been a lie.

~

Someone slipped something in the drink of the next starry-eyed college student to chat him up. It burned the instant Pietro drank and he spent the night coughing up bits of his own throat. Wanda sat with him on the bathroom floor, rubbing his back and muttering a spell he didn’t recognize. He couldn’t tell if it was meant to heal him, or harm the one who had done it.

He spent more nights in. She started to read entrails and leaves before taking new clients- and even stopped taking appointments with a few of her regulars she didn’t fully trust. Since they had decided to only allow others in when they were both home, Barnes was no longer invited into her bedroom. As long as she watched what she ate, he barely needed to feed on anyone else. Life was simpler this way, and Pietro was growing to enjoy the quiet.

When a rock smashed the painted over kitchen window at noon while he got out of bed for a drink of water, they spent the night boarding up any source of natural light.

“We may lose our deposit.”

He laughed and took her hand, bringing it up to press to his lips. “We will have to stay. To make it worth it.”

“Until world’s end.”


End file.
